Pefect Melody
by Colorain
Summary: Jesse returns to meet Winnie five years after he has left . . . and is unprepared for what happens next.


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Perfect Melody

By Colorain

Disclaimer: _Tuck Everlasting_ belongs to the *beautiful* Natalie Babbit (whose name I hope I spelled right). I don't own that, or the movie, which was also wonderful. Let's just figure this to be movie-verse, cause movie-verse is cool. And if this has been done before . . . let's just hope my own spin is a little different. More if you want it, less if you don't. ;) Enjoy.

Jesse Tuck made the trip into Treegap as carefully as he could one day that first week in August: wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his eyes, his shoulder-length hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, and garbed in a long brown coat that swept the dusty roads.

He had waited five years. In his immortal lifetime, these had been the longest years he had ever lived. He had waited, kept himself away from her by traveling the world non-stop, proving to himself only that he could not live without her. 

Winnie Foster. He wondered if she still waited for him. If she didn't . . . Treegap would become his hell.

~*~

He had walked the road to her house few times in the brief moment he had known her, but it had always felt like he was coming home. The black iron gate was a barrier — to both him and her, keeping him out while shutting her in — but it was something else solid in a world where everything changed but him and his family. Her white house was suddenly blinding in the afternoon sunlight. Jesse pulled the hat further over his eyes and watched the ground that he walked on so he wouldn't fall.

The sound of raised voices in the stillness and the heat caught his attention, and he slowed his steps as not to interrupt and miss what was going on.

"I don't know what you are anymore! You're not a human, you're a _witch_!"

Jesse winced at the term. It had been countless decades before, but the Tucks had also been labeled as witches because of their longevity. They had lost their home, Miles' family . . . any attempt at having a normal life. For if the Tucks were one thing for certain, they were not normal.

A second voice joined the argument. "I'm your _daughter_!" it wailed, and Jesse Tuck felt his heart stick in his throat for the first time in a very long while. _Winnie_. Winnie Foster was still here. She hadn't gone away and left him all alone.

The first voice — her mother, he recognized now — carried a harshness in the tone that made it ugly and grating. "You stopped being my daughter when those Tucks took you away." Jesse shut his eyes at the brief flicker of pain he felt. So his name was still a curse to Mrs. Foster. He wondered if she had managed to poison Winnie's mind against him as well.

The gate was swinging open. He could hear it, its creaks and groans loud in the breezeless day. It struck him as odd, since Mrs. Foster had always been so protective of her daughter. _Break free,_ he pleaded to her. _Break free and come back to me._

The next sound he heard brought him to his knees and the taste of bile to his throat. A gun, being cocked. _She wouldn't. She wouldn't kill her own daughter. Winnie._

Winnie stopped begging her mother. Her voice was sad and old when she spoke. One word. She only spoke one word to save herself. 

"Don't."

~*~

Jesse knew the shot was coming and that he was powerless to stop it as certain as he knew that he really could die, and Winnie's death was what was going to kill him. At the sound of the shot, several things happened at once. Winnie fell to the ground with a sickening thud, Mrs. Foster fainted dead away, and Jesse Tuck stole through the gate, picked up Winnie, and ran into the forest before Mr. Tuck had thundered down the stairs and outside to the porch.

He held her limp body in wiry arms, seventeen years old forever and suddenly faced with death. The light of the sun filtered down in dappled areas through the trees, but the prick of uncontrollable tears stopped him from even seeing. It was a wonder he didn't fall, but Jesse Tuck had always been something of a wonder. 

Her name was like a prayer in his mind. _WinnieFosteryou'renotallowedtodie.TakemetakemeIcan'tlivewithoutyoutakemeinstead._

She had been so close, and even the waters from the spring wouldn't save her now. She didn't draw breath. She didn't live. The wheel had moved on, and left Jesse Tuck behind in the dust.

His legs began to burn from the running, and his own chest heaved desperately for air. Again his knees hit the ground, and this time he placed Winnie gently down on the forest floor, shaking and sobbing over her.

So great was his grief that he thought her heard her voice calling his name, and it only freshened his tears. He was close to vomiting, to passing out, to lying down next to her and holding her body until it became earth and flowers bloomed at her grave.

A hand suddenly gripped his wrist, tightly, and he blinked back the tears to look who had caught him here in his moment of weakness. He didn't care. Winnie. Oh, Winnie.

"You never said it would be strange like that," a sweet voice pouted, and Jesse Tuck breathed again. Air poured into his lungs, and the ground rushed up to meet him.

At his side, Winnie Foster turned and held him tight.

"You came back," she whispered. "I knew that you'd come back."


End file.
